"Hi," Rhonda"s voice came from the dayroom door. "Got a minute?"
I looked up in mild surprise, deciding to pa.s.s on the obvious retort that when TransShipMint got done with me I would have all the time in the world. "Sure,"
I.
said instead, waving her toward one of the other chairs at the table. "You come here often?"
"Hardly ever," she said, sidling over to the indicated chair and sitting down.
Her left hand, I noticed, had stayed out of sight behind her the whole way, as if she was hiding something behind her back. "But I wanted to talk, and this seemed a good time to do it."
"Sure," I nodded. "What about?"
She nodded down at the reader on the table in front of me. "Working out how to pay off the TransShipMint Corporation?"
"Trying to work it out," I said, sighing. "Really just going through the motions. There"s just no way I can raise that kind of money that fast."
"There was one," she reminded me. "I hear Chen offered to unbury your other account if you"d get Peter to let her off the hook with the flapblacks." She c.o.c.ked her head slightly. "I wanted you to know I was very impressed that you turned her down. So was Jimmy, by the way."
I snorted. "Thanks, but impressing the two of you was pretty far down on my reasons list. We needed to scare her, and scare her good, or we"d have had her and the whole Chen-Mellis family hanging over our heads for the rest of what would have probably been depressingly brief lives. This way... well, at least we all have a chance of living through it.""a.s.suming self-preservation outweighs her sense of vengeance," Rhonda pointed out soberly. "And a.s.suming she doesn"t figure out what"s actually happening."
"I don"t think there"s any chance of her doing that," I said. "She doesn"t even know about the InReds, let alone how they interact with younger flapblacks."
Rhonda shivered. "I guess it just feels too much like a magician"s trick,"
she said. "Peter creates the illusion that a whole galaxy worth of the flapblacks are deliberately and actively snubbing her; when really all it is is a single Ancient InRed who"s been persuaded to hang around her whenever she leaves the planet. It just seems so fragile, somehow."
"Only because you know how the trick"s being performed," I pointed out. "And because you know that it would only work on a world like Parex where there"s a single s.p.a.ceport and no more than one ship leaving at any given time." I shrugged. "Frankly, if there"s any magic in this it"s that Peter was able to persuade one of the InReds to cooperate this way in the first place."
"Yes," Rhonda murmured. "It"s rather sad, really, having to spend its last few weeks of life sitting on Chen instead of getting to listen to the Freedom"s Peace"s music."
I smiled. "Oh, I don"t know. You didn"t see what they did to Chen during her last day in prison. Where were you, by the way?"
"I was working out a deal with Suzenne," Rhonda said, frowning. "What did they do to her?"
"Nothing much," I said, frowning at her in turn. This was the first I"d heard of any deal. "They just played one of the InRed"s favorite melodies over and over again on her cell"s speaker system. Knowing how my mind does things, I figure that tune will be spinning around her mind for at least the next month. What deal?"
"Oh, that"s nasty," Rhonda said. "Brilliantly nasty. Gives the Ancient something to listen to, and probably helps him identify her, too. Your idea?"
"Peter"s," I said. "What deal?"
"Oh, it wasn"t anything much," she said casually. "You remember how much Suzenne liked my beadwork? Well, I sold her my entire stock. Beads, hoops, pattern lists, fasteners, needles, thread, looms, finished items-the works."
"Congratulations," I said, feeling obscurely disappointed. After all of that buildup, I had expected more of a payoff. "She"ll be a big hit at their next formal concert."
"I think so," Rhonda agreed. "She was already talking about getting one of the fabricators retasked to making a fresh supply of beads."
"Sounds great," I said, frowning. Rhonda, I suddenly noticed, still had a twinkle in her eye and seemed to be fighting hard to keep from grinning. "So OK,.
let"s have it."
"Have what?" she asked, clearly determined to drag it out a little more.
"The big punch line," I said. "What did she do, offer you a 50 percent commission or something?"
"No, of course not," she said. "How in the worlds would I collect on something like that, anyway? No, I insisted on cash."
Her hand finally came around from behind her back, and I saw now that she was holding a small wooden box like the kind Bilko kept his poker chips in. "And that"s exactly how she paid," she concluded. "With cash."I frowned down at the box. It was one of Bilko"s poker containers, all right.
Clearly, there was something significant here I was missing. "OK," I said.
"Cash. So?"
Rhonda rolled her eyes. "Cash, Jake. The only kind of cash they use on the Freedom"s Peace...?"
And with a sudden jolt I had it. Cash.
Reaching over, I unlatched the lid and flipped it up. And there they were, neatly stacked in the velvet padding: a triple row of shiny golden coins.
United Jovian Habitat dollars, one hundred thirty years old each. A currency that hadn"t been minted since the Habitats were reabsorbed by Earth over a century ago.
I looked up again at Rhonda. "How many do you have?" I asked, my voice quavering slightly.
"Enough," she said quietly. "I checked a couple of numismatic files on Parex, and it looks like they"ll pull in somewhere between a hundred fifty and three hundred thousand neumarks." Reaching across the table, she pushed the box a few centimeters toward me. "They"re yours."
There are times in every man"s life when pride demands he argue. Far past the end of my financial rope, I knew this wasn"t one of them. "Thank you," I said.
"You"re welcome," she said. "For all our faults, we"re a pretty good crew. It would be a shame to break a team like this up."
I smiled wryly. "Even Jimmy and his youthful impertinences?"
"Listen, buddy, those youthful impertinences stood up with you against a member of the Chen-Mellis family," she reminded me tartly. "And whether he"s willing to admit it or not, I think your moral stand back on the Freedom"s Peace impressed him a lot."
"I suppose," I said noncommittally. Still, I had to admit in turn that Jimmy"s willingness to accept my judgment had impressed me, as well.
Not that I was willing to admit it out loud, of course. Not yet, anyway.
"Still, it"s sort of a pain. The problem with moral leadership is that you have to keep being moral for it to do any good. I liked it better when I could get what I wanted by yelling at him."
"Yeah, right," she said, patting my hand in a distinctly sarcastic fashion.
"Don"t worry, though-I"m sure you"ll be able to handle it."
She smiled slyly. "I, on the other hand, being a lowly engineer, have no need of leadership of any sort, moral or otherwise." She tapped a fingernail against the box of coins. "And I"ll tell you right now I intend to take utterly shameless advantage of you over this."
"Ah," I said, scooting my chair over to the cooler. "So, what, you want me to serve you a drink?"
"That"s a start," she purred. "And then we"re going to sit here together, all nice and cozy, and I"m going to tell you all about the wonderful new engines you"re going to buy for me."
Copyright 2002 by Timothy Zahn ISBN: 1-4104-0072-7.
Additional copyright information "Point Man," copyright 1987 by Timothy Zahn. First published in NewDestinies, vol. 1.
"Hitmen-See Murderers," copyright 1991 by Timothy Zahn. First published in Amazing Stories, June 1991.
"The Broccoli Factor," copyright 1990 by Timothy Zahn. First published in a.n.a.log, February 1990.
"The Art of War," Copyright 1997 by Timothy Zahn. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March 1997.
"The Play"s the Thing," Copyright 1997 by Timothy Zahn. First published in a.n.a.log, February 1997.
"Star Song," Copyright 1997 by Timothy Zahn. First published in a.n.a.log, July/August 1997.